Wednesday 26 September 2007

Andrew and I had one of our marathon business meetings today which seemed very productive. Next season, which had looked like a bit of a disaster with some confusion between us and certain promoters as to just when the concert dates were, is now shaping up just fine. The company accounts look OK too, I think.

I bumped into Mary Ann last night, who'd noticed I haven't written anything here for a while. Most of my activities have been non-musical, and I figured no-one really wants to read about me doing my accounts. Robbie's birthday on Monday means that I now have a teenage son, so I've also been doing generation gap things like learning to edit video, and discovering just how easy it would be to fill up my iPod without paying for any of the tunes. I think I'll stay firmly on the right side of the law in solidarity with the music profession though. 

This morning I took the car across the river for its MOT with my folding bike in the boot, and cycled back through Pollok Park and the south side of Glasgow, which for a born-and-bred westender like me is a different country. But to be honest, the riverside is a different country too: I rather like it, but when I'm there it doesn't feel like I'm in the city where I grew up: I could be almost anywhere. I thought joining National Cycle Route no. 7 and following it would be simple, as the signposting is brilliantly clear where it exists, but I wandered off on a couple of curious diversions at unmarked junctions here and there. All the same, crossing the huge M8/M77 motorway on a cycle flyover in the sunshine is very good indeed. 

I've been invited to be a tutor on a very interesting course next year that puts traditional musicians together with composers: it wasn't until I'd pretty much said yes that I realised I was being booked as a composer. Argh. They usually have real composers - I'm not sure that a bit of TV and theatre writing years ago, and the occasional wee tune really counts. But I thought I'd go and propagate my current themes of 'shut up and listen': get people to stop playing all the time and use their ears instead. Now I just have to work out some techniques for how to teach listening by next March. A day spent with Bill Drummond last week planning No Music Day made perfect sense in the light of this.

I finally finished reading my little old copy of HV Morton's In Search of Scotland after about three years: Bob Deegan recommended it to me at least a decade ago. And I took up Moncton Comic Book Guy's recommendation of the first volume of Bill Willingham's Fables, which I enjoyed far more than I was expecting.